Why is Eddie Murray under appreciated?
coolstanley
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Seems like his collectibles are undervalued. He is only one of 7 players to be in the 500 home run club and 3000 hit club.
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
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I sure wish I could have the multiple Eddie Murray rookie cards back that I had as a 10-year-old collecting that 78 Topps set.
I mean PSA has 10's at almost 45 000$ how is that undervalued? And 1200$ for 9's.
Compared to what players exactly is he undervalued? I mean Willie Mays rookie is from 1951 and Hank Aaron from 1954 they are much rarer in higher grade due to this.
I would rather own Mays or Aaron's rookie over Murray's any day of the week. Murray was a great player but his card is from 1978 and I imagine there are still many 1978 topps boxes that have yet to be opened.
Why is Eddie Murray under appreciated?
I thought Eddie Murray was Pretty Cool...
It's been A Very Long day for me today..
🏈📺🥤
Why is he under-appreciated? Quiet guys who never have a great season (two seasons with a WAR of 6 or greater, highest being 7.1) don't generate tons of interest.
Oh, so its all about just one stat? Gotcha.
He never won a MVP award, but he did finish in the top ten eight times. Key member of those great Orioles teams in the late 70's-early 80's.
He also ranks 11th all time in RBI.
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
Ignore list -Basebal21
i liked his brother charlie
Because what most made Murray great - getting hits when it matters - didn't show up in any stats back when he played, and is to this day either ignored or underappreciated by 99% of fans.
Murray is 91st all-time in offensive WAR. I can't emphasize enough just how terrible a stat WAR is, and this illustrates that. Right on top of him, by the way, is Toby Harrah. Harrah was a fine player, but a stat that shows that he was better than Eddie Murray is beyond worthless, it's laughable.
A much better stat is WPA, mostly because it looks at situational hitting. In WPA, Murray is 41st all time, a much better reflection of how good he was. In WAR, Murray finished in the top 10 five times, never finishing higher than third. . In WPA, Murray finished in the top 10 nine times and led the league three times.
I agree with everything except WAR being a bad statistic. It does exactly what it’s intended to do and it can’t help what people don’t understand.
I agree that it does exactly what it's intended to do - that's pretty much the definition of any formula - but it's intentions are just plain wrong in a couple of ways.
The biggie, the one that places Toby Harrah on top of Eddie Murray in OFFENSIVE WAR, is that WAR says that Toby Harrah was more valuable offensively than Eddie Murray because Harrah played 3B and SS. That's so obviously and laughably wrong I assume it doesn't require elaboration. The reason this happens, because the people who created WAR incorrectly intended it to, is that the offensive component of WAR is so entangled with the defensive component that they can't be separated. I have no doubt that the people who created WAR, and you, and every sentient being on the planet, knows that Eddie Murray was more valuable offensively than Toby Harrah. But the people who made WAR weren't concerned about that, they were concerned with their shiny new formulas and when those formulas spit out laughable results, they just shrugged.
Now, it is an open question (although the answer remains obvious) whether Toby Harrah was a better PLAYER than Eddie Murray. Maybe Harrah's lead in offensive WAR gets offset by Murray's lead in defensive WAR. And guess what, that's what happens. WAR says that Harrah (the SS/3B) was more valuable on offense than Murray, but Murray was the better player because Murray (the 1B/DH) was significantly more valuable on defense. No, I did not make that up. That's what WAR says. And do you know why WAR says that? Because WAR is pure, unadulterated crap. Your defense is that it was always intended to be crap. I won't argue the point; I think you're probably right about that, and you're also right that most people don't understand that.
You didn't refute a single thing I said. Highlight a GREAT season he had. 1982 when he hit .316 with 32 homers? That's really good - not great. 1983 when he hit .306 with 33 homers? Or 1984 when he again .306 with 29 homers? 1985 with .297 and 31 homers? All really good, none great.
Mind you, I'd love to have a good defensive 1B who plays 160 games a year, hits .300 and gives me 28-32 homers every year while never causing controversy. But that doesn't necessarily translate to hobby appreciation.
I argue he had several great years. He led the league in homers and RBI in 81. In 83 he finished 2nd in MVP voting won a SS, and Gold glove, and had a OPS of 156. He also hit two home runs in the World Series. In 84 he led the league in OBP, and OPS and won another Gold Glove.
Terry Bradshaw was AMAZING!!
Ignore list -Basebal21
I'm not sure what "great" means to you, but by my definition Murray was "great" in 1984 and 1985. He led the AL in WPA both years, and in lots of other things, especially in 1984.
But I think you're probably right that there are a whole lot of people who stop looking after the triple crown stats and therefore miss those great seasons.
The reasons are largely conjecture, but that Murray is underappreciated seems pretty close to fact. He was the best player in the AL for the first 10 years of his career (not each and every year, just in total), and the list of players who can claim "best in league" for a 10-year period who aren't immediately recognized by everyone as all-time greats is a short one. Sadly, I think Murray somehow found himself on that list.
this, 100%.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
@dallasactuary
Correct.
There is even more to that in Murray's favor along those same lines, aside from WPA and Run Expectancy(including the small weaknesses in even those measurements that hampered Murray in his prime in those measurements).
The other big reason is because the writers did not like Murray. Some time around 1979 Murray shunned them after one of them betrayed Ed in what he considered to be an unflattering story about his personal upbringing and a breach of privacy. So his relationship with the Media was soured and never got better. He never trusted them....and with what you see with the mainstream media today, can't blame Murray for that.
Also, considering all of those 'extra' things that WAR doesn't measure, and the writers disliking Murray, Murray should have been the MVP in 1983 and 1984, but he had both of those factors working against him. George Brett deserved it in 1985 and Murray should have been second.
WAR says that because it’s a measure of value. It’s more difficult to replace a SS than it is to replace a 1B and this is why the SS position is more valuable. I have difficulty arguing that this isn’t valid - as this ratio is based solely on the results over time. WAR is a normative algorithm used to compare a player against the replacement average outcome in a position by position value. My point is that this is an inferential statistic and nothing more. It presents a perspective for measure and does what it intends to do. That people keep comparing a players WAR from 2024 to a players WAR from 1910 isn’t a problem with the algorithm. People have been using WAR incorrectly as long as it’s been around.
Naw. WAR does what it’s supposed to do - it tells us a players value to their team. Let’s not use it to compare players directly, especially across eras.
When WAR first started showing up, I saw some real head scratchers.
I started looking into it to try to understand how Wade Boggs could have so much higher of a WAR than Tony Gwynn (91-69) when their offensive numbers are so close. Boggs walked a lot more, but Gwynn stole more bases. They played almost the exact number of games during the same time period.
Then I read an article that said WAR was a VERY POOR number to use to "prove" one player was better than another. Yet it get used here time and time again.
Is WAR a "good" stat? I wold say NO. It is of no use here, at least how it's being applied.
The writers have been screwing up the MVP award for decades because of their personal bias'.
If a guy isn't cooperative in interviews, he'd better have a MONSTER year to win an MVP award.
Case in point, Dick Allen. He asked the sportswriters at one point to refer to him as "Dick" instead of "Ritchie". For quite some time he was then referred to as "Ritchie, call me Dick" Allen.
I always wondered why they did that, seems childish. Just refer to him as he asks.
Of course there are many more examples out there. The writers "screwed" Ted Williams so often it's not funny.
Someone else once laughed about the MVP award, saying Puckett should have won a few, as there wasn't a player in the AL more "valuable" to his team than Kirby. I have to agree, his leadership qualities were amazing. His numbers were quite good as well.
In a nutshell, the defensive component of WAR is useless. It is a random number generator because it uses garbage inputs and applies formulas to those garbage inputs that not only don't remove the stink, they just make make it worse. Then, for reasons nobody can explain sensibly, they combined their defensive garbage with what started out as reasonable offensive measurements in such a way that they turned their offensive measurements into garbage.
In combination, offensive and defensive WAR doesn't stink as bad as defensive WAR alone, but what you end up with is a stat that is usually (but not always) directionally accurate, and that can only be somewhat useful comparing players at the same position who played at roughly the same time. Try to use it to compare Eddie Murray to an infielder and you just get garbage. I can think of no situation where adding WAR to what is already known improves the comparative analysis of any two players. WAR is of such limited value, and in such limited circumstances, that I think it's useless.
If they tracked exit velocity back then, people would be talking up the Legend of Eddie. Some of his barrels were insane.
Gobble.
This is a great example of the issue.
Because it doesn't fit for what I want it to speak to, or because people using it incorrectly, it's inherently bad. It allows us to compare two players easily and correctly, but not independently, which is where people's minds just crack under the concept. It allows you to compare two players, relatively, with regard to their value to the teams they played on during their career or season or part of a season or game or inning or at bat. In theory, WAR is a good statistic for selecting MVP, however, I would expect outcome (specifically how a player's team does) to bias the selection of MVP because we can't see the relative for the absolute. The absolute of course speaks to a player who has raised the bar for their team 5 rungs and they made the post-season vs a player who has raised the bar for their team 7 rungs and they did not make the post-season. WAR disambiguates the context of success from this comparison.
I agree with the premise that Eddie Murray, and his collectibles, are undervalued because he's not considered as elite as I think he was... in general. I just disagree that WAR is a bad statistic because it's used incorrectly. It also happens to have a fairly high correspondence in these "shoot from the hip" player comparisons, so I think people just assume that's what it's meant for. Then when it misses one entirely we think we just figured it all out and now we can say it's trash.
I can take a snowmobile out on the lake too... But it's still not a great boat.
No mind cracking here. I will just say again, WAR definitely does not allow you compare two players correctly because its defensive component simply does not work. And because the defensive component infects the otherwise useful offensive component, the offensive component doesn't work either. There is no "correct" way to use it, because the statistic itself is riddled with incorrectness.
This only says.
Which is fine, but pointless to offer. It’s there to promote informed consideration - the role of statistics. What are statistics? Since statistics seek to describe or infer, we have to be careful in understanding what statistics intend to do. I could be wrong but a players value should be an abstraction of both their offensive and defensive values. The more we integrate those metrics over time the better their representation becomes.
I would like to understand your perspective but I don’t see this going anywhere. I just hate to have one perspective out there that’s just an assertion. Here the assertion is, from what I can parse, that WAR is bad because it includes defense, and we should not consider defense when assessing either a players value or the ease a team can replace that value at a particular position. This seems wrong to me on a few levels.
My position, repeated only because you are the single only person here who doesn't understand it, is that defense matters a great deal, and WAR is bad because the way it attempts to account for defense is flat out wrong.
If you think what I wrote equates in any way whatsoever to "defense doesn't matter" or "WAR is bad because it includes defense", and that's what you said, then I am flat out wasting my time trying to discuss baseball statistics with you. I will not make that mistake again. My apologies if English is not your first language, which would explain your last post.
His relationship, or lack of, a positive relationship with the media may have cost him some popularity. Reporters negative reporting could influence the collecting public.
You’re too antagonistic to be worth the effort.
The quickest, surest way to make me antagonistic is to say that I said something that I didn't say. When the thing that you make up for what I said is incredibly stupid then you get both barrels.
There are two possibilities here, where you said I said something that I clearly did not say:
1 You know I didn't say it. That makes you a troll, and not worth talking to.
2 You think I did say it because you can't comprehend what I say. That makes talking to you pointless.
I'm open to a third possibility, but I don't think there can be one.
I’m always open to a discussion and I would hate to have taken something out of context or to have misinterpreted it. I’ve reviewed your posts here and I’ve run an analysis of all of your posts on this site.
You do present as an expert but you dismiss with prejudice any competing opinion. That you leverage insult to denigrate opinions almost immediately and proactively tells me that you don’t like to be challenged and are offended by it.
Of course. There can be only two possibilities.
I don’t know what hand life has dealt you Steve but I hope tides turn.
The writers also vote for awards. Players popularity is influenced by winning these awards.
Oh that's precious.
True or false: you said that I said something incredibly stupid that I had not in fact said.
If true, why did you say that I had said something incredibly stupid that I had not in fact said?
Answer those two questions and retain whatever dignity you're clinging to, or dance around them or ignore them. Your choice.
What choice do you leave me with? None. I’ve been trapped by your wizardry.
I’m not sure whether you interpreted my remark to be about defense in general or a blithe remark about your abject dismissal without either definition or argument of defensive WAR. It was the latter. I’m not attempting to mischaracterize what your thoughts are on dWAR, but they’re unsubstantiated so I just referred to it by token “defense”. Defense in general mattering or not is further from the point, which isn’t about whether WAR has function in comparing players - it’s not intended to, than my actual point. That WAR has a purpose - that is to assess a players value to their team and possibly predict their future value.
So by your rules I only have to answer 1 question. I answer False.
However, this prevents me from retaining my remaining dignity as I was unable to answer two questions.
This is just silly. If you want to discuss defensive WAR fine but you have to give me more than it stinks and it’s a random number. Which algorithm first. Then position only or all. Then what season are we talking about? And finally. What are we using the value to describe or infer?
Or don’t, which I prefer, because we’re not taking about anything meaningful now. It’s distracting from my original point which was.
I agree with what you stated in your assessment of why Murray is undervalued. I can’t agree with your assertion, without any supporting evidence, that WAR is “useless”.
WAR has a high correlation with predicting team wins. That makes it useful.
WAR with age has a high correlation in predicting a players performance. It also produces a model which has merit but remains flawed because of uncertainty. This doesn’t make it invalid, but its accuracy is less than useful.
WAR has been regression tested against past data since baseball has been recorded and has been measured as statistically significant. That must mean it’s not useless.
That’s my point and that was my original statement. I’m also fine to discuss dWAR statistics, because I think you dismiss it too eagerly. Maybe you don’t mean random - arbitrary could have made some sense. Most think the position coefficients are arbitrary rather than empirical and I would say there is some truth to that.
Ooof. Does dignity stink? If so I think my dog just lost all her dignity.
Leading the league in homers and RBI happens every year. Doesn't make it great. Excellent? Sure. Great? No. Unless he hit 40 in the shortened season or something.
Again, excellent year, not great.
Same deal - excellent, not great.
You're making the argument that he should have been more appreciated. I agree. He was really good. I'm just telling you why he wasn't/isn't. Guys who are runner-up for an MVP a couple times, never hit 35 homers, aren't flashy, etc., simply don't get appreciated as much as they might deserve.
Great doesn't happen every year. Somebody leads the league in WPA every year.
You said:
>
and
Now you say:
There is no way that anyone - anyone for whom English is their native tongue - could interpret your earlier remarks as a blithe remark about my abject dismissal of the specifics of the defensive WAR formulas. No way. Read your second comment above again. "WAR is bad because it includes defense and we should not consider defense when assessing a player's value". That is the quote that you attributed to me. It says nothing remotely related to how we measure defense, it says that I think we shouldn't even consider it, let alone try to measure it. In English, again apologies if this language is new to you, there is only one way to interpret that statement.
We have now established, pending your clarification that you are still learning English, that you didn't understand what I wrote and now, with your latest post, that you are a liar. Oh, and that you have no dignity.
I have no comment on this part of your post. I'm just repeating it so I can find it easier if I ever feel down and need a laugh. I know that you have no idea why this makes me laugh, but that just makes it funnier for me.
That’s what I mean. You’re just belligerent. You’re arguing some point that I’m not interested in discussing and because I just causally remarked on your bookended assertions you have to switch the topic. You’re just repeatedly insulting and framing the discussion and assuming you’ve made your point.
This is what I said in response to you being wrong.
I didn’t say you were wrong then. WAR isn’t useless by definition. It’s correlated to outcomes. One of those is wins. That’s important. That is all that’s necessary to declare useful function. I believe that any intelligent individual, having integrity, with an understanding of the facts, would agree with me that you are incorrect.
You can enjoy your distraction that your derisive interaction provides. But you might just be intelligent enough to know that you were proven incorrect here. Until next time you’re 0 - 1.
Fair enough. I did not mean to imply that Murray was great in those years solely because he led the league in WPA, I was just using that as an example of what, looking at everything, look like great seasons to me.
I will say, though, that Murray's 6.9 WPA in 1984 is pretty close to "great" all by itself. Can you find an example of someone reaching that level in a season that you would not describe as "great"? If you can, I will, at the very least, understand better what "great" means to you.
Baseball Reference makes it tough to search for stuff like this if you don't pay for a subscription. However, it did find me somebody else with a WPA of 6.9 - Reggie Jackson in 1969. That year, as I'm sure you already know, Reggie hit 47 homers, slugged .608, had an OPS+ of 189 and 334 total bases, leading the league in runs, slugging, OPS, and OPS+, and 2nd in total bases. And that's playing in Oakland.
Murray in 1984 led only in OBP (same OBP as Reggie's), was 9th in total bases, missed the top 10 in slugging, etc.
I think it's pretty obvious that Reggie had the better year with his 1969 versus Eddie's 1984. Yet their WPA was the same. (And, yes, I'm aware WPA measures a lot of stuff, not just the things I highlighted here).
NOTE: Didn't mean to imply that you were saying Murray's 1984 was great just because he led in WPA. That was more just a flippant short response on my part. Apologies.
And, again, Eddie was really good in 1984. I'd rather have him on my Tigers in '84 than the combo Darrell Evans and Dave Bergman. But was he GREAT? Eh, a step below, which is still a really good place to be.
I definitely agree that Reggie in1969 was better than Eddie in 1984. WPA is a really good stat, but it, like every stat, is just one piece of information.
It seems to me that we are splitting semantic hairs between "great" and "really good", so I'll let this go. Your "great" line just seems to be a little bit higher than mine.
That's fair.
i want to thank you guys for curing my insomnia . i read this last night and was out for a solid 8
I’m intrigued. Are there threads which have been keeping you awake at night?
no but any threads repeatedly mentioning WAR hit me like 2 mg of klonopin
I've bookmarked this one for future trouble in that area
It’s cool. I’ve got a Corolla.
I highly doubt there has ever been a discussion where Eddie Murray is the topic that has elicited this much passion.
I LOVE the sports forum
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
toyota dealer down the street had a tricked out 3g parked out front 74 i think .
forest green with racing graphics side view mirrors out on the front fenders
haven't seen that thing recently but i think it was legit
If you're edged 'cause I'm weazin all your grindage, just chill. Don't tax my gig so hard-core cruster!
One thing that Ed should have done different was his training regimen as he got into his 30's. He was big into stretching and flexibility instead of weight training. While the rest of the league was hitting the resistance training hard by that time, he wasn't.
Another reason Murray is under-appreciated is because people confuse longevity with sustained excellence and mistakingly put Murray as a compiler in the rate stats(and sabermetric stats are partly rate stats too). Murray's sustained excellence actually hides his peak in his era.
For example, Murray's best four year peak numbers in WPA and Run Expectancy compared to the other elite hitters from his era:
Murray WPA 23.9. RE 210.6
Boggs WPA 17.6 RE 211
Schmidt WPA 18.9. RE 190.2
Brett WPA 18.1. RE 183.4
Gwynn WPA 17.1. RE 176. This was in the steroid era.
Mattingly WPA 14.9. RE 176.9
Gwynn WPA 15.5. RE 139. This was Gwynn's best in the 1980's
Rice WPA 14.1. RE 167.8
How often do we hear that Don Mattingly should be in the HOF based on his tremendous peak and short career, yet Murray's peak was considerably better.
Rice actually got into the HOF based on him being labeled "the most feared hitter" in the league in his prime, yet Murray clearly out-distanced Rice in their primes. Also, the pitchers voted on the Most Feared hitter in 1985 and Murray was the landslide winner for his league.
Best Six year peaks:
Boggs 26.6 and 293
Murray 29.7 and 269.7
Schmidt 28.1 and 267.4
Brett 21 and 221
Mattingly 21.3 and 233.7
Rice 16 and 193
Murray comes out on top as a hitter(a player who's primary value was derived from his bat offensively) as the best of the best among the HOFers from his era. Brett and Schmidt get all the well deserved acclaim for being the elite of the elite in their prime, yet Murray beats them both in their four and six year peaks...and somehow Murray even gets relegated into the compiler category.
Mattingly closes the gap a little on his six year peak, although the others on that list all have the strike shortened 1981 season within their totals that help depress them a little. But Mattingly is still behind Murray in the six year peak even though Murray has a strike season incldued in his peak. Yet Mattingly is feverishly championed for the Hall of his elite 'koufaxian' peak, yet Murray's was better...and Murray's is ignored or hidden.
Boggs favors almost as well Murray, but many do have concern over Bogg's splits being so drastic outside of Fenway.
In the end, Schmidt and Brett get a better career value, and perhaps Murray should have retired a couple years earlier and not had so many old man at bats in the steroid era(when he wasn't a steroid guy), that helped drag his sabermetric numbers down.
Murray also played every day and played through injuries and faced every pitcher that gave him a hard time. So his percentages could have been a little better if he took days off in opportune times too.
However, the point remains, that Murray was certainly a King of MLB hitters in his prime within his era...and quite possibly the King of Kings at least for a four year peak compared to other stars of his era and their best hitting year peaks.
Thank you for the detailed write up. I appreciate the time this took. It certainly does seem that Murrays prime was underrated. Perhaps his consistency belied his greatness to a degree. people got used to him putting up 30 2b, 30 HR, 100RBI 180 hits year after year when those were elite markers.
George Brett, Roger Clemens and Tommy Brady.
The only switch-hitter to smack 500 home runs and compile 3,000 hits, Eddie Murray was certainly a dynamic hitter. He has more hits from both sides (individually) than the vast majority who ever play the game. If his card were printed when Mickey Mantle's was, Mickey would still be worth more, because of who the Mick played for.